I had been thinking for a while about starting to read books without pictures to Alex. At four and a half years, is it too early? Is he really ready? What if he rejects books saying, "there aren't any pictures!" Will I risk putting him off forever? A lot of question which soon proved unfounded.

On Sunday afternoon, there was the first version of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film on TV, which helped me make up my mind. Alex is CRAZY about chocolate so I thought that Roald Dahl's "Charlie" would be perfect.

You might be wondering why I find it so important to read a book of this type at his age. There are lots of reasons to do so. In particular, it enriches his vocabulary, improves his concentration span and his capacity to imagine when picture books force him to accept the illustrator’s own representation of the story and limit the number of words per page as well as their difficulty. It is like speaking to a baby only using the words that they know: mama, milk, sleep. It is quite limiting, isn’t it?

I tried to instil some suspense and announced that two days later we would be starting to read a “big boys book” with few pictures about a chocolate factory and a crazy chocolate maker. He immediately showed strong interest and wanted to start reading now. Before that day he had never DEMANDED that I read to him, so I fetched the book so as not to miss the opportunity (my Montessori influence, probably).

I had planned to only start with one or two chapters but his enthusiasm after the first pages pushed me to continue to the end of the third chapter. The next day, he asked me to read on, and the next day. Today it has been three days since we started Charlie and we have read half of it. I still can’t believe it! Is it possible that he had been ready for many weeks or even months?

He did exclaim: “There aren’t any pictures!” but I replied to him: “You can see pictures in your head, can’t you?” and he never mentioned it again.

He is fascinated by golden tickets, ice cream that never melts, chewing gum that never loses its taste, the oompa loompas and all things out of Roald Dahl’s imagination. This was probably the ideal title to start reading “big boys books”.

Hi and welcome! My name is Elsa. A certified Montessori assistant, I am passionate about children's learning and alternative methods of education. I am currently pregnant with my first baby and like most new mums, have few expectations and plenty of questions on how best to raise a child. From now on, this blog will not only be about children's learning but also broader questionings about life with small children.